The re-regulation of broadcasting: Or the mill owners’ triumph

Discusses the driving forces behind the Communications Bill 2001 of Great Britain. Terms of the bill; Arguments concerning the re-regulation

Getting the inactive active : implications for public health policy

Epidemiological data have established that a sedentary lifestyle increases the incidence of at least 17 medical conditions. The evidence is strongest for coronary heart disease. A sedentary lifestyle is now the normal lifestyle for the majority of the populations in developed countries and relapse from regular physical activity is also high. Thus there is clear need for public policy aimed at increasing the physical activity levels in the population. Policy makers have begun to respond to this need and recently Scottish and English plans for increasing physical activity levels in the populations have been published

Identifying the routes by which children view pornography online: implications for future policy-makers seeking to limit viewing report of expert panel for DCMS

Terms of reference This report represents the collective views and expertise of a panel of academic experts convened by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport. Panel members drafted individual responses to specified questions, then met in a policy forum on the 2nd March 2015. The panel was initially tasked with providing ‘an evidence-based narrative on children’s routes to viewing hard-core pornography online and identifying challenges and opportunities for future policy-makers seeking to limit young people’s viewing of hard-core pornography online’

Sustaining health improvement activities delivered in English professional football clubs using evaluation: a short communication

It has been suggested that football and communities are inextricably linked. Healthy lifestyles are an important component in maintaining the sustainability of local communities, not least, because a convincing evidence base supports the holistic benefits that can be derived from health-enhancing behaviours, such as regular physical activity. As such, efforts to promote health improvement through sport and physical activity include those interventions delivered in professional sporting settings. Johnman and colleagues (Johnman and Mackie, ‘The Beautiful Game’) have heralded sports clubs as important venues for the delivery of health improvement interventions for a range of groups across local communities. This includes health improvement activities delivered in professional football club community schemes. While exemplary practice shows how health improvement programmes can be implemented and evaluated, our experience and engagement with professional football club community schemes supports the notion that more needs to be undertaken to help clubs develop monitoring and evaluation strategies in order to assess the impact of their health improvement programmes. In our short communication, we share our plans for helping two professional football clubs develop their monitoring and evaluation strategies for their community health promotion programmes. Potential outcomes emerging from this process are twofold. (1) To help club community schemes in-build and sustain monitoring and evaluation practices within their future health improvement provision. (2) To use the impact and process outcomes emerging from programme evaluations, to successfully secure the necessary resources to sustain future health improvement activities for their local communities. Outcomes emerging from this study will be of interest to football clubs and evaluators alike, as they seek to develop evaluation strategies for their health improvement programmes

The School Sport Co-ordinator Programme: Changing the Role of the Physical Education Teacher?

Over the last decade or so, young people have increasingly become a focus of UK sport policy. Fuelled in part by concerns such as the increasing levels of childhood inactivity and obesity, and the lack of international success in sport, a plethora of policy initiatives aimed at young people have been developed. In April 2000, the government published its sport strategy document, A Sporting Future for All, pulling together all the threads of recent policies, and in it, restating its commitment to youth sport, sport in education, excellence and sport in the community. One such policy initiative, the School Sport Co-ordinator programme, is the focus of this paper. The School Sport Co-ordinator programme, currently being introduced into schools in England, is an initiative that involves two government departments (sport and education) and a number of other agencies, reflecting the government's current agenda to ensure 'joined up policy' thinking. It aims to develop opportunities for youth sport through co-ordinated links between PE and sport in schools, both within and outside of the formal curriculum, with those in local community sports settings. The essence of the School Sport Co-ordinator programme is to free up nominated teachers in schools from teaching to allow them time for development activities, specifically to encourage schools and community sports providers to work in partnership. This paper draws on data from an ongoing research project examining the implementation of one School Sport Co-ordinator partnership, 'northbridge'. Drawing on in-depth interviews, it explores the perceptions of the newly established School Sport Co-ordinators of their changing role. The paper highlights some of the initial tensions and challenges for them in their task of working across different educational and sporting contexts